Dual mandate

A dual mandate is the practice in which elected officials serve in more than one elected or other public position simultaneously. This practice is sometimes known as double jobbing in Britain (not to be confused with double dipping in the United States, i.e. being employed by and receiving a retirement pension from the same public authority at the same time). Thus, if someone who is already mayor of a town or city councillor becomes elected as MP or senator at the national or state legislature and retains both positions, this is a dual mandate.

Dual mandates are sometimes prohibited by law. For example, in federal states, federal office holders are often not permitted to hold state office. In states with a presidential system of government, membership of the executive, the legislature, or the judiciary generally disqualifies a person from simultaneously holding office in either of the other two bodies. In states with bicameral legislatures, one usually cannot simultaneously be a member of both houses. The holder of one office who wins election or appointment to another where a dual mandate is prohibited must either resign the former office or refuse the new one.

Originally, MEPs were nominated by national parliamentarians from among their own membership.[2] Prior to the first direct elections in 1979, the dual mandate was discussed.[2] Some advocated banning it, arguing that MEPs who were national MPs were often absent from one assembly in order to attend the other[2] (indeed, the early death of Peter Michael Kirk was blamed by his election agent on overwork resulting from his dual mandate[3]). Others claimed that members with a dual mandate enhanced communication between national and European assemblies.[2] There was a particular interest in the dual mandate question in Denmark: EuroscepticDanish Social Democrats supported a compulsory dual mandate, to ensure that the state's MEPs expressed the same views as the national legislature,[4] and the government of Denmark supported a compulsory dual mandate when the other eight member states supported an optional dual mandate.[5] However, a 1976 European Parliament law preparing for the 1979 elections expressly permitted a dual mandate.[6] In 1978 the German politician Willy Brandt suggested that one third of MEPs should be national MPs.[7]

In 2004 Clover Moore became the independentmember for Sydney in the NSW Parliament without resigning as Lord Mayor of Sydney. The issue of Moore holding both positions had brought the issue to the forefront in Australia and led the premier of New South Wales in 2012 to propose a new law, dubbed in the media as the "Get Clover bill", which banned this dual mandate. The proposed law was adopted and in September 2012 Moore resigned her NSW seat soon after she was reelected as mayor.[8]

As in neighboring France, the culture of dual mandates is very strong in Belgium and that country currently has one of the highest percentage of dual mandate holders (MPs, aldermen, municipal councilors) in the world. During the 2003–2009 period, 87.3% of members of the Walloon (French-speaking) Parliament held dual mandates, followed by 86,5% in the Flemish (Dutch-speaking) Parliament, 82,0% in the Chamber of Representatives (the Federal lower house) and 68.9% in the Senate. During that same period, 76.5% of all European Parliament MPs from Belgium held dual mandates.

More than one fifth of all Belgian MPs were mayor at the same time with, by far, by the highest proportion (40%) to be found in the Walloon Parliament.[9]

In Canada dual mandates are rare and are frequently barred by legislation at the federal, provincial, or territorial level. At the federal level, section 39 of the Constitution Act, 1867 prevents a Senator from being elected as a Member of Parliament; similarly, s. 65(c) of the Canada Elections Act makes members of provincial or territorial legislatures ineligible to be candidates to the House of Commons. At the provincial level, the situation varies from one province to another.

In other circumstances, an elected official almost always resigns their first post when elected to another. Dual representation has occurred occasionally when the member was elected to a second office shortly before their other term of office was due to expire anyway and whereby the short time frame would not merit the cost of a special by-election. In 1996, for example, Jenny Kwan continued to be a Vancouver city councillor after being elected to the provincial legislature. The British Columbia legislature had debated a "Dual Office Prohibition Act" which failed to pass second reading.

The double mandate was prohibited from the start in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick; it was abolished in Ontario in 1872, in Manitoba in 1873, and in 1873 the federal parliament passed a law against it; Quebec passed its own law abolishing it in 1874.[11][12]

However, dual mandates within a province remained legal. From 1867 to 1985, 305 mayors were also members of the Quebec legislative assembly (MLA). The two best-known cases were those of S.N. Parent who was simultaneously mayor of Quebec City (1894-1906), MLA and Premier of Quebec (1900-1905). Longtime Montreal Mayor Camilien Houde (1928–32, 1938–40) was also simultaneously MLA for a total of 2 /1/2 years during his mandates as mayor. However that type of dual mandate had virtually ceased when laws adopted in 1978 and 1980 prohibited MLAs from holding any local mandate.

It is common for the MPs of the Finnish Parliament to hold a mandate as a member of their local municipal council as well. 79 percent of MPs elected to parliament in 2011 were also municipal council members.[13]

The MP-mayor of Belfort and the senator-mayor of Beaucourt at a ceremony in 2014

The dual mandate is a common practice in the French Fifth Republic (1958–present) and holding up to five elective offices at once was at least theoretically possible until recently. Several laws to limit the practice, known as cumul des mandats, have been introduced in recent decades but 85% of all members of parliament (both chambers included) still held another mandate (typically at the communal or departmental level) in 2008.[14] By far the most coveted local mandate is that of mayor, traditionally a highly prestigious function in France.

A hotly debated law to prohibit all dual mandates, to take effect in 2017, was adopted in July 2013.[15] Following the adoption of the law, former President Sarkozy and other members of the opposition UMP party have declared that if elected in 2017, their party would revise or even revoke that law.[16][17] Many Socialist Party MPs and senators have also expressed their unease with the law imposed by President Hollande and might welcome a review of the law. In the meantime, the ubiquitous 'député-maire' (MP and mayor) and 'sénateur-maire' are still familiar figures of the French political scene.

Following the June 2012 legislative elections, fully 85% of all National Assembly members (438 deputies out of 577) hold a double mandate (often as mayor of a mid- to large-size city) and 33 have four mandates.[18] Currently, out of 348 senators, 152 are also mayors.[19]

In Hong Kong, dual mandate is common for members of the territory's Legislative Council, who serve concurrently as members of one of the territory's eighteen district councils. Before the abolition of the two municipal councils in the territory in 1999, it was common for politicians to serve concurrently at all three levels.

The 2001 Act prohibited being a member of multiple county or city councils, or multiple town councils, or both a town and city council.[25]Brian O'Shea was a member of both Waterford City Council and Waterford County Council until 1993. County councillors were allowed to sit on a town council,[26] and many did so. The 2003 Act provided that a candidate elected simultaneously to a forbidden combination of local councils has three days to choose which seat to take up, with the other or others then being considered vacant.[27] The Local Government Reform Act 2014 abolished town councils and instead subdivided most counties into municipal districts; the county council's members are the district councillors for all districts within the county.[28][29]

Per the Spanish Constitution, legislators in the regional assemblies of the Autonomous Communities are barred from being elected to a seat in the Congress of Deputies, the lower house of the Cortes Generales. More precisely, regional legislators can run for the seat, but if elected they must choose between the regional and national parliaments. Nevertheless, members of lower tiers of the Spanish decentralized structure, such as provincial councillors or members of local councils, including mayors, can and have held seats in the Congress of Deputies. The rule barring regional legislators does not apply to the upper house of the Cortes, the Senate: in fact, regional legislatures are entitled to appoint a varying number of members from their ranks to the Senate, according to the population of the region. Currently, the Autonomous Communities appoint 56 Senators, the other 208 being directly elected in general elections.

At the EU level, prior to the 2009 European Parliament elections, there were a small number of members of the European Parliament who were also members of the House of Lords.[32] However, it is now European law that a member of the European Parliament (MEP) may not be a member of the legislature of a member state.[1] This, with regard to the United Kingdom, therefore applies to the House of Commons and the House of Lords, as the constituent bodies forming that member state's legislature. As it is impossible to disclaim a life peerage, it has been ruled that peers (who sit as members of the House of Lords) must take a "leave of absence" from the Lords in order to be an MEP; this is also the procedure for when a peer is the UK's European Commissioner, which has in recent times usually been the case.

Nothing in UK law prohibits a member of the House of Commons or the House of Lords from being simultaneously a mayor. However, the practice is uncommon and usually involves a transition period from one elective office to another. Thus Ken Livingstone remained MP for Brent East until the dissolution of Parliament despite his election as Mayor of London a year before.[36]Boris Johnson resigned his seat as MP for Henley on being elected mayor in 2008, but became an MP again in 2015, a year prior to the end of his second term as mayor (he did not seek a third term). Sadiq Khan, elected as the Labour mayor in the 2016 election, resigned his seat as MP for Tooting soon after his election to the mayoralty.[37]

At a lower level, it is common for people to hold seats on both a district council and a county council. Several MPs have also retained their council seats, most often until the expiration of their terms; Mike Hancock simultaneously held a council seat and a seat in Parliament between his election to Parliament in 1997 and his defeat in the local elections in 2014.

The term dual mandate is also applied to the twin objectives of the Federal Reserve Bank: to control inflation and promote employment.

The practice is banned by the constitutions of many U.S. states, but as of 1992 it was still legal in Connecticut, Illinois, New Jersey and New York. The U.S. Constitution prohibits members of the Senate or House from holding positions within the Executive Branch (Art. I, Sec. 6, cl. 2), and limits the president to his salary as chief executive, saying he may not "receive... any other Emolument from the United States, or any of them" (Art. II, Sec. 1, cl. 7).

In August 2008, Governor of IllinoisRod Blagojevich proposed legislation that would prohibit dual-office holding as part of changes to the state's ethics bill, stating that "dual government employment creates the potential for a conflict of interest because a legislator's duties to his or her constituents and his or her public employer are not always consistent." Critics, such as Representative Susana Mendoza, called the actions "spite" on the part of the governor.[39]

Fulfilling a campaign pledge that he had made when first running for the New Jersey Legislature, Jack Sinagra sponsored a bill passed by the New Jersey Senate in 1992 that would ban the practice. At the time that the legislation first passed, there were some twenty elected officials who served in the New Jersey Legislature and another elected office, including Assemblyman Bill Pascrell, who was also mayor of Paterson, New Jersey; State Senator Ronald Rice, who also served on the Newark City Council; and Assemblyman John E. Rooney, who was also mayor of Northvale. These officials protested the proposed ban as interfering with the will of voters to elect officials as they see fit.[40] A newspaper called former State senator Wayne R. Bryant the "king of double dipping" because he was collecting salaries from as many as four public jobs he held simultaneously.[41]

Governor of New JerseyJon Corzine signed legislation in September 2007 that banned the practice statewide, but the 19 legislators holding multiple offices as of February 1, 2008, were grandfathered into the system and allowed to retain their positions.[42] As of January 2013, only four of the nineteen (listed in bold) continue to hold a dual mandate.[43]

^"The Dual Mandate". The Irish Times. April 21, 1977. p. 9. Sir Peter's own election agent has stated categorically that he died from pressure and overwork caused by his dual mandate as an MP at Westminster and a member in Strasbourg.

^Geaney, Louise (2 June 2003). "Local government needs independent 'fiscal autonomy'". Irish Independent. Dublin. Retrieved 16 April 2010. The Local Government Bill 2000 proposed to abolish the dual mandate but the Act dropped the idea, only for it to be re-introduced — with a handy €12,800 sweetener — in 2003.

^ ab"Double-dipping continues, increases after ban", South Jersey Media Group, March 24, 2008. Accessed Sep 7, 2012. "Since Gov. Jon S. Corzine signed a ban on dual-office holding in September, the number of lawmakers who hold more than one office has actually increased -- from 17 to 19 -- according to a report by The Star-Ledger of Newark. This is because a grandfather clause allows any lawmaker holding two offices as of Feb. 1 to keep both."